Europe des Cultures - Maria Loizidou

Éclairage

Maria Loizidou est une artiste contemporaine chypriote connue pour ses sculptures, ses installations et son travail en art vidéo.

Née en 1958, elle fait des études d'art à l'école nationale des beaux-arts de Lyon, puis obtient une bourse pour étudier la psychanalyse à Paris auprès d'Armando Verdiglione, psychanalyste italien disciple de Lacan. Elle suit également les séminaires de Gilles Deleuze et de Michel Foucault.

Ces études en psychanalyse ont profondément marqué son travail qui s'inscrit dans une veine expérimentale et propose une réflexion sur l'Histoire collective et les souvenirs personnels des hommes. Elle conçoit l'art comme un moyen de résistance contre le conservatisme : "une ?uvre d'art ne peut être considérée comme telle que si elle propose un nouveau message au monde."

Maria Loizidou travaille beaucoup avec les matériaux textiles et a notamment réalisé toute une série de sculptures sans tête. En 1988, elle représentait la Chypre à la Biennale de Venise avec l'oeuvre Le Mythe d'Ariane en trois actes. Elle vit et travaille actuellement à Nicosie.

Valérie Dhiver

Transcription

(Music)

Maria Loizidou

(Greek) Everyone is around us, something which to me proves that there also exists a third conviction.

(Music)

Maria Loizidou

That it is not one person who creates a work of art, it's all the people around them and the artist is just a means for this to come out. (Greek) All the people who have an active role in convincing the artist to make something... (Greek) also those who will look at it and meet it. (Greek) I worry about war, I worry about the suffering of man, I worry about the coming confrontation, (Greek) Because yes, it's the memories and to a degree my guilt, because I am a mother. (Greek) I feel guilty that I've created a child who is growing up in a part of the world that at this point, is a border between Europe and the East.

(Music)

Maria Loizidou

I believe that the role of art is to overturn the status quo.

(Music)

Maria Loizidou

I had the luck to finish my studies in France in the 1980s when psychanalysis was predominant. Now, it's less so because either way, the humanistic field which was France's trump card, with the current crisis France is going through, I think it's lost its interest. (Greek) I had the luck to live those nice years, which greatly strengthen this relationship with psychoanalysis. (Greek) And gaining a scholarship for Paris, I had the great luck to become attached to the psychoanalytic school of the Italian Armando Verdiglione who is Lacan's student, and to have a long-standing relationship with psychoanalysis. (Greek) I was greatly impressed by this all Cartesian relationship of the French, the enquiry, and I believe that as an individual, in my own idiosyncrasy, it was a method which I felf would help me to get know myself better and to better handle my relationships with others. (Greek) I think it is the most important training I had in my life, much more serious that my studies at the school of fine arts.

(Music)

Maria Loizidou

I don't like to provoke, I prefer to keep this energy for my personal dealings with things I disagree about. I am not provocative in the presentation of my work, it depends of course on the dynamics of the relationship I find myself in.